A New Member of the Growing INEE Family

Prof. Qasem Alnewashi, Education Technical Advisor at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in the Middle East shares his thoughts and experiences about the 3rd day of the 2009 Global Consultation in Istanbul:

On this Thursday, while the INEE Global Consultation aims at bridging the gaps currently affecting education in emergency, leaders of the G20 countries agreed to kick-start the world economy by pulling together billion-dollar plans to save banking systems in crisis. Is there a link between the two emergencies? At least our Consultation conclusions should highlight the extent of global inequality in educational opportunity which will give the G20 leaders pause for thought when they recognize that approx. 75 million children are out of school worldwide, most of them in conflict-affected countries.

While I am a newcomer to the INEE growing family, I have an interest in most of the concurrent sessions, but I cannot attend all… so I found myself somewhat lost! But during the lunch and coffee breaks I tried to catch up through my colleagues who attended sessions of my interest and discussed with them the questions that I would like to have answered. It was exciting to hear a lot of invaluable thought and suggestions on what needs to be updated in the INEE Minimum Standards. In the session “INEE MS: What Are the Next Steps?”, the presenters explained how every single aspect is taken into consideration in order to make the MS fit to all purposes and contexts. For example, Jennifer Sklar indicated in her presentation that even the format of the INEE MS handbook is taken into deep consideration to support their use by varying contexts and stakeholders.

The closing plenary was very informative and chaired by an exiting facilitator, Mr. Peter Buckland, Lead Education Specialist from the World Bank. The speakers reflected upon their practices and the key findings that emerged during the two and half days of the INEE Global Consultation, and they also focused their comments on the priorities for collective action and the gaps that remain to be bridged. Among all the representations in the closing panel, I would like to focus on the interesting case study of INEE as a network conducted by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), in which a young intellectual, Simon Hearn highlighted the INEE’s forms and functions, strengths and challenges, and made some recommendations for the network’s continued development as a collaborative community and how to promote a dynamic membership to advocate the field of education in emergency.

Away from the regular agenda of the Consultation, this event shortened, at least to me, distances and times! I conducted meetings with people who are in my agenda and I might need several months and thousands of dollars to organize such meetings. In these meetings with colleagues from different agencies whom I had never met in person, I put names to faces. We put together our plans and strategies for next steps. For example, an interesting meeting, during a coffee break, with Prof. Christopher Talbot on the Certification of Iraqi Refugees in the Middle East. The discussion led us to plan for a joint IRC-UNESCO-UNHCR-UNICEF workshop to complete, as an obligation, the task that our colleague Jackie Kirk (who passed away tragically in Afghanistan) had planned to carry out in the region.

Among countless positive remarks regarding the Consultation, I would like to suggest that if it is possible for future events to ensure that a representative participation, presentations, and speakers to cover the different regions around the world, as I noticed that most of the activities are selected from Africa and east Asia, but for example very little from the Middle East. Also, I do support the idea of considering more participation of the governmental entities in the Network, focusing mainly on the countries where tensions are there.

At the end of the exciting day, I joined the Arabic Language Community meeting, in which the members got to know each other for the first time, at least for me. We discussed intensively the community achievements during the last year,  including the re-translation of theINEE MS into Arabic  including the re-translation. The facilitator, Mr. Mustafa Osman from Islamic Relief led the discussion related to the communication issues and the brainstorming for the way forward and the coming action points.

Finally, given the critical importance of education in emergencies and the urgent gaps and challenges highlighted in the Consultation, several actions are crucial to consider: higher education institutions should include education in emergency as a profession within their academic and research programs. And governments, NGOs and UN agencies should include education in emergencies as a relief measure and more sustained attention to and it within basic relief assistance through to recovery.